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    Revisiting the Women Who Defined Lilith Fair’s Sound

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    Hear songs by Sarah McLachlan, Tracy Chapman, Meredith Brooks and more.Sarah McLachlan onstage at Lilith Fair.Susan Farley for The New York TimesDear listeners,Every once in a while, it’s good to be reminded that Sarah McLachlan is more than just the voice behind that depressing pet commercial that makes me look away from my TV. (You know the one, for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. I’m getting a lump in my throat just thinking about it.) The writer Grayson Haver Currin provided just such a reminder, in an incisive profile of McLachlan published by The New York Times this week.McLachlan is also, among other things, the leader of a school that provides free musical education to children, an avid surfer (which I learned from the article!) and, of course, one of the founders of Lilith Fair, a highly successful if unjustly stereotyped late-90s concert tour that celebrated female artists.Lilith Fair came during a period of critical and commercial prosperity for female artists in a number of traditionally male-dominated genres like rock, folk and that wide-ranging radio format called “alternative.” But as often happens when women gain power and visibility in a certain space, it also provoked a backlash. Even as it was raking in millions, Lilith Fair was the butt of many a late-night TV joke. As the critic Rob Sheffield put it in a 2019 oral history of Lilith Fair for Vanity Fair, “Certainly nobody on late-night TV comedy in 1997 felt obligated or encouraged to make jokes about Ozzfest or the Horde tour.”Lilith Fair wasn’t perfect and is not beyond scrutiny. Most of the performers booked in its first year were white, though the bills in its second and third years became more diverse. And I’m not here to argue that every act who played Lilith Fair has stood the test of time.Still, many have: Fiona Apple, Tracy Chapman, Sheryl Crow, Indigo Girls, Emmylou Harris … I could go on and on. But instead, I made a playlist.For brevity’s sake, I limited myself to artists who played on Lilith Fair’s inaugural 1997 tour. That still gave me plenty of great songs to choose from, as you’ll hear. I’ve included some obvious choices (did you really think I would leave off a certain karaoke classic by Meredith Brooks?) and some deeper cuts you may have forgotten about (that Tracy Bonham song still rips). Although an attempt to revive the tour in 2010 didn’t quite work, I do hear the influence of Lilith Fair artists in this current generation of pop stars like Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, Haim and, yes, even Taylor Swift, which means it’s an especially interesting time to look back at the artists who defined the so-called Lilith Fair sound.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘It’s Only Life After All’ Review: Indigo Girls Documentary

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      The director Alexandria Bombach benefited from the musician Amy Ray’s archivist instincts in this warm, compelling new documentary.Indigo Girls have been going strong for over 40 years now, and maybe the key to their resilience is that they never were cool. Often, they got it worse: Even at their commercial peak in the 1980s and ’90s, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers were routinely mocked for being too earnest, too poetic, too folky, too lesbian. Back then, being labeled a female, gay singer-songwriter was an artistic and commercial curse, as Ray recalls in “It’s Only Life After All,” a smart, compelling new documentary.The director, Alexandria Bombach, greatly benefited from Ray’s archivist instincts: The musician has held on to decades’ worth of artifacts and opened up her vault — 1981 rehearsals, recorded on cassette when Ray and Saliers were in their teens, are startlingly crisp documents of a budding chemistry, for example.From this clay Bombach has sculpted an affecting portrait of two women who have stuck to their beliefs and, just as important, their loyalty to each other. Existing fans will be mesmerized, but non-fans like me should also get a kick out of “It’s Only Life After All.” The film is especially good about contextualizing the band’s emergence in the midst of condescension (at best) from the mainstream media — their dramatic, and very funny, reading of a withering 1989 review in The New York Times is a highlight — along with their personal struggles and steadfast political engagement for causes, including the Indigenous-led organization Honor the Earth.Now that the band is experiencing a cultural moment — its hit “Closer to Fine” was prominently featured in “Barbie,” and an indie jukebox musical movie set to their songs, “Glitter & Doom,” came out last month — it is delightful to see them have the last laugh.It’s Only Life After AllNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 3 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Glitter & Doom’ Review: Romance With an Indigo Girls Soundtrack

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      Songs by the Indigo Girls soundtrack a musical romance.There’s nostalgic art. Then there’s art that seems like somebody thawed it after 30 frozen years. “Glitter & Doom” doesn’t yearn for some older time. It’s pure time-warp: a gay musical-love-dramedy that could’ve screened all summer at the old Philadelphia art house where I used to work, plunked amid the queer independent-filmmaking bonanza that helped make the early-to-mid-1990s seem like every gay thing was possible. The movie’s got an earnest, amateurish case of the feel-good gosh-gollies that would have made sense playing down the hall from movies as different (although not that different) as “Go Fish” and “Wigstock,” “Zero Patience” and “The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love” and — God help us all — “Claire of the Moon.” The two dozen or so songs in “Glitter & Doom” aren’t new (but aren’t based on Tom Waits’s 15-year-old live album, either). They’re by the Indigo Girls. Many of them are songs the Indigo Girls made a certain kind of popular during the years of that very bonanza. And what the movie does with them is call attention to the emotional mountain range of Emily Saliers and Amy Ray’s songwriting.Is theirs music that ever said “engine for movie about young man who wants to skip college to join circus and falls for young troubadour who paints window frames?” Not to my ears. But ask me if I thought this same music would be throwing the heart-swelling uppercut it does in a blockbuster about sentient dolls. Both “Barbie” and the final sequence of a particularly exhilarating episode of “Transparent” use the same Indigo Girls hit (“Closer to Fine”) in a way that proves the power of this music to gather together, win over, wear down, wind up. It’s music that, because it’s so true and melodically harmonized, transcends what The Times’s Lydia Polgreen identified, with ardor, as the cringe of its naked feeling.No one in “Glitter & Doom” needs a winning over. Its blood gushes with that kind of cringe. Glitter (Alex Diaz) is the juggling, jaunting, camera-obsessed circus aspirant. On the dance floor at a nightclub neoned to the max, he connects with Doom (Alan Cammish), the melancholic folkie. What ensues is nearly two hours of the false starts and second-guessing that romances use as sealant. The movie, which Tom Gustafson directed and Cory Krueckeberg wrote, weaves together various Indigo Girls songs from various eras in order to lubricate communication. Michelle Chamuel did the rearranging, and her seamlessly merging “Prince of Darkness” with “Shed Your Skin” and “Touch Me Fall” constitutes real innovation. She and the filmmakers have gleaned how much ambivalence suffuses Saliers and Ray’s catalog, how often and how intensely it calls on fear, damage and anger to negotiate with courage and hope, how powerfully that ambivalence resides in the way that Ray’s sharper, huskier voice can both lurk beneath and entwine the solar clarity of Saliers’s. I mean, the film’s called “Glitter & Doom.” To that end, Diaz is a brighter, more open singer than Cammish, whose voice has a spiked outer register.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      15 Great Songs From 1989 (the Year, Not the Album)

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      A playlist celebrating a staggeringly great year in music: Pixies, Janet Jackson, De La Soul, Madonna, Indigo Girls and more.Pixies want you to know that 1989 was really a stunning year in popular music. Gie Knaeps/Getty ImagesDear listeners,Today’s playlist is a homage to the music of 1989. Yes, the year. Why, you ask? Does it have anything to do with … you know … a certain musician rereleasing one of her most popular albums, with a title referencing the year she was born? I have no idea what you’re talking about. I simply wanted to celebrate a staggeringly great year in music.Consider just some of the albums released during this annus mirabilis: “Like a Prayer.” “3 Feet High and Rising.” “Paul’s Boutique.” “Doolittle.” “Rhythm Nation 1814.” “Pretty Hate Machine.” “Disintegration.” “Full Moon Fever.” “The Stone Roses.” “Bleach.” I could go on, but I have a playlist to get to.For brevity’s sake, I limited myself to 15 songs. I left off some artists who have made appearances on previous playlists; I adore “Disintegration,” for example, but I also did an entire Cure playlist a few months ago. Some 1989 hits, too, are so ubiquitous — “Love Shack,” “Free Fallin’,” “Like a Prayer” — that I don’t need to put them on the playlist: You will probably hear them in the next few days as a result of simply going about your life. And some omissions are just personal. As a small child, I was so terrified of Jack Nicholson’s “Joker” in the Tim Burton-directed “Batman” that Prince’s No. 1 hit “Batdance” still kind of creeps me out.That still left plenty of great songs to choose from, though. On this playlist, 1989 reveals itself to be a year when inventive, imaginative sampling had reached the mainstream in the music of Beastie Boys, De La Soul and Public Enemy; a generation of female pop stars like Madonna and Janet Jackson were coming into their power; and the alt-rock wave was beginning to form underground thanks to artists like Pixies and Nirvana.This one will leave you with a new appreciation for a year in which so many great songs were released. Reach out, touch faith, and enjoy the enduring bounty of music from 1989.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Janet Jackson: “Miss You Much”Let’s kick things off with the first single from Janet Jackson’s pop opus “Rhythm Nation 1814,” released in September 1989. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis’s unparalleled production really makes this one sound gigantic. (Listen on YouTube)2. De La Soul: “Me Myself and I”Built around a sample of Funkadelic’s “(Not Just) Knee Deep” (among a few other songs), De La Soul’s crossover hit is a playful ode to self-acceptance. (As the group’s Posdnuos put it, “The press was referring to us as the hippies of hip-hop. This song became a way to express that this wasn’t a gimmick, and that we were being ourselves.”) “3 Feet High and Rising,” the debut album featuring this single, ranked No. 1 on the Pazz & Jop Poll, the Village Voice’s (former) annual barometer of critical consensus. (Listen on YouTube)3. The Stone Roses: “She Bangs the Drums”In May 1989, the Manchester pop-rockers the Stone Roses released their beloved, ambitious, and impossible-to-top self-titled debut album. Dreamy, singalong hooks abound, as on this exuberant single. (Listen on YouTube)4. R.E.M.: “Pop Song 89”Though R.E.M.’s sixth album, “Green,” came out in late 1988, I couldn’t resist including this cheekily titled leadoff track, which was — true to its prophecy — released as a single in 1989. (Listen on YouTube)5. Depeche Mode: “Personal Jesus”In a 1990 Spin interview, Martin Gore of Depeche Mode said that the band’s hit from the year before was inspired by Priscilla Presley’s memoir, “Elvis & Me”: “It’s about how Elvis was her man and her mentor and how often that happens in love relationships; how everybody’s heart is like a god in some way,” he said. “We play these godlike parts for people but no one is perfect, and that’s not a very balanced view of someone, is it?” Something tells me he’ll be interested in Sofia Coppola’s upcoming movie “Priscilla,” based on the same source material. (Listen on YouTube)6. Beastie Boys: “Egg Man”Many people still consider “Paul’s Boutique,” Beastie Boys’ ambitious 1989 celebration of the art of sampling, to be the group’s masterpiece. “Egg Man” may be one of the sillier songs on the album — it is, quite literally, about how the mischievous Boys liked to egg people — but the craft that went into its construction is still clear. (Listen on YouTube)7. Love and Rockets: “So Alive”Goth rock was steadily seeping into the mainstream by 1989, as evidenced by the success of the Cure’s ”Disintegration” and this darkly glittering surprise hit from the British alt-rockers Love and Rockets, which hit No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. (Listen on YouTube)8. Madonna: “Cherish”I do not need to remind you that “Like a Prayer” is a great song, so how about this slightly-less-overplayed hit from Madonna’s triumphant fourth album? If there were a Drug Store Music Hall of Fame (and there should be), I would nominate this song. (Listen on YouTube)9. Pixies: “Debaser”Not to get all “High Fidelity,” but “Debaser” — that ecstatically bizarre welcome into the wonderful world of “Doolittle” — has got to be one of the greatest Side 1, Track 1’s ever. (Listen on YouTube)10. Elvis Costello: “Veronica”“Is it all in that pretty little head of yours?” Elvis Costello sings on this bittersweet midcareer hit, inspired by his grandmother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s. “What goes on in that place in the dark?” Co-written with Paul McCartney (which makes sense, given the faint echoes of “Eleanor Rigby”), “Veronica,” which peaked at No. 19 on the Hot 100, became Costello’s highest-charting single in the States. (Listen on YouTube)11. Public Enemy: “Fight the Power”“1989, the number of another summer,” Chuck D begins on this incendiary call to consciousness, written for “Do the Right Thing,” Spike Lee’s film of the same year. “Fight the Power” was a lightning rod upon release, and 34 years later it remains a potent indictment of racism and a richly textured tribute to Black art. (Listen on YouTube)12. Nirvana: “About a Girl”In the summer of 1989, a little-known rock band from Seattle released its debut album, “Bleach,” on the indie label Sub Pop. It would have been hard to predict then that Nirvana’s next studio album would have a seismic effect on the music industry, but the craft of “Bleach” tracks like “About a Girl” certainly displays the nascent songwriting talent of the band’s leader, Kurt Cobain. (Listen on YouTube)13. Galaxie 500: “Strange”Elsewhere beneath the mainstream, the indie trio Galaxie 500 released its great second album, “On Fire,” in October 1989. Though sometimes associated with shoegaze and dream-pop, there’s a sky-scraping boldness and a stirring emotion animating the LP’s fourth track, “Strange.” (Listen on YouTube)14. Kate Bush: “This Woman’s Work”One of the more wrenching songs ever written about childbirth, Kate Bush initially composed “This Woman’s Work” for the 1988 John Hughes movie “She’s Having a Baby.” The following year, she released this slightly different version as the closing track on her album “The Sensual World.” (Don’t sleep on Maxwell’s cover, either.) (Listen on YouTube)15. Indigo Girls: “Closer to Fine”And finally, it’s Barbie’s favorite track on the Indigo Girls’ 1989 self-titled album. Thanks to its inclusion in this summer’s hot-pink blockbuster, “Closer to Fine” is experiencing a well-deserved resurgence, but plenty of soul-searchers have been belting along to it in their cars since ’89. (Listen on YouTube)Don’t know about you, but I am un chien Andalusia,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“15 Great Songs from 1989 (The Year, Not the Album)” track listTrack 1: Janet Jackson, “Miss You Much”Track 2: De La Soul, “Me Myself and I”Track 3: The Stone Roses, “She Bangs the Drums”Track 4: R.E.M., “Pop Song 89”Track 5: Depeche Mode, “Personal Jesus”Track 6: Beastie Boys, “Egg Man”Track 7: Love and Rockets, “So Alive”Track 8: Madonna, “Cherish”Track 9: Pixies, “Debaser”Track 10: Elvis Costello, “Veronica”Track 11: Public Enemy, “Fight the Power”Track 12: Nirvana, “About a Girl”Track 13: Galaxie 500, “Strange”Track 14: Kate Bush, “This Woman’s Work”Track 15: Indigo Girls, “Closer to Fine”Bonus TracksIf you’re looking to read something about that other 1989 thing, well … I wrote about its most provocatively titled “From the Vault” track.I also — busy week — published a profile of the independent-minded Gen Z pop star PinkPantheress, who graciously did not make fun of me for not going on as many roller coasters as she did while I was reporting this story. Bless her for that.Plus, if you’re looking for some new music as an alternative to that big release that shall not be named, let Jon Pareles and Giovanni Russonello provide you with some recommendations, from artists like Mr Eazi, Kevin Sun, Silvana Estrada and more. More

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      Popcast (Deluxe): ‘Barbie,’ Jason Aldean’s Culture War and Drake’s Tour

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” film, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, and the way in which even anti-corporate dissent has been fully absorbed into corporate brandingA conversation about the way the “Barbie” soundtrack uses contemporary pop stars, and its even more successful deployment of classic hits by Matchbox Twenty and the Indigo GirlsDrake’s current arena tour, his fan-like desire to enjoy Drake hits alongside his audience and his creative versatility, which includes U.K. rap and cringe comedy podcastsThe culture war push behind Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town,” which reached No. 2 on the Billboard singles chart after a week of controversyThe New York Times’ 50 Rappers, 50 Stories project and its inclusion of Violent J from Insane Clown PosseNew songs by Tanner Adell and Valee featuring Z MoneySnack of the weekConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. More

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      How the Indigo Girls Brought Barbie ‘Closer to Fine’

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      A 1989 song about soul searching has maintained cultural relevance for three decades, but the band has also long been the target of homophobic jokes. Fans are savoring a moment of vindication.In Greta Gerwig’s Barbieland, where every day is the best day ever, pop stars like Lizzo, Dua Lipa and Charli XCX provide a bouncy soundtrack as the live-action dolls go about their cheery, blissful lives. That is, until Margot Robbie’s “stereotypical” Barbie cues a record scratch with a rare and shocking existential query: “Do you guys ever think about dying?”To resolve this disruption to her otherwise perfect life, she hops in her pink Corvette and belts along to a track filled with strummed acoustic guitars and close harmonies. “There’s more than one answer to these questions, pointing me in a crooked line,” she sings with a smile, before thrusting a manicured pointer in the air.Barbie’s song of choice on her way to the Real World is the Indigo Girls’ “Closer to Fine.”The Indigo Girls, a folk duo from Georgia who have released 15 studio albums since 1987, featured “Closer to Fine” as the opening track on their self-titled 1989 LP. Emily Saliers wrote the song after she and her fellow singer and guitarist, Amy Ray, graduated from Emory University in Atlanta and were regularly playing a local bar called Little Five Points. It became a staple of the Girls’ live show that spread thanks to college radio play and an opening slot on tour with another Georgia band, R.E.M.It’s a song about seeking, Saliers said by phone this month: “I searched here and I searched there, and if I just try to take it easy and get a little bit of knowledge and wisdom from different sources, then I’m going to be closer to fine.”“Closer to Fine,” with its four-chord verses, octave-jumping chorus and slightly inscrutable lyrics, has been a staple of dorm room singalongs, karaoke excursions and car rides for years, and it is the Indigo Girls’ most identifiable tune. “Indigo Girls,” their first album for a major label, went double platinum and won a Grammy.“It’s got a very easy melody and really easy chorus, and the chorus repeats,” Saliers said. “When you get to a chorus of a song that you’re into and you can just sing it at the top of your lungs, I think just structurally, melodically, it’s really a road trip song and I think that’s why you see it in those kinds of scenes.”Ray said “Closer to Fine” represents 80 percent of the band’s licensing, but the duo are generally told very little about how their music will be used. They don’t allow commercials, but have had successful soundtrack and onscreen placements in films like “Philadelphia” and TV shows including “The Office” and “Transparent.” In 1995, the duo starred as Whoopi Goldberg’s house band in the movie “Boys on the Side.”“I think it was really important at that time for us to reach more people,” Ray said in a phone interview. “Those kinds of things are just invaluable for an artist.”The Indigo Girls have a similar hope for “Barbie,” already a global phenomenon with powerhouse marketing and intergenerational brand recognition. A “Closer to Fine” cover by Brandi and Catherine Carlile appears on the expanded edition of the movie’s soundtrack.“I always felt that song was really defining of who they were in that era,” Brandi Carlile said in an interview. “That, even more than lesbians, what they were was intellectuals. They were offering up a life beyond the life that young people knew. And it’s a very young person’s song,” she added. “It’s about seeking out more than you thought you believed.”Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie in the movie. “It’s really a road trip song,” Saliers said of the band’s most recognizable tune.Warner Bros. PicturesStill, given little context in an initial call from their manager, Saliers said she was nervous. “I didn’t know who was directing it or anything, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is about Barbie? We better check to make sure this is kosher,’” she recalled. “But as it turned out, it’s in the hands of Greta and it’s just this amazing thing that happened. It was a complete surprise to me and Amy.”Ray called it a gift: “It’s just absolutely wonderful that they’re using it.”“Closer to Fine” recurs in the film three times and appears in its official trailer, but it’s been recirculating in pop culture organically, too. In March, a video of the comedian Tig Notaro singing it on a party bus alongside a crew that included Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach and Sarah Paulson blew up online. The band’s latest album, “Long Look,” arrived in 2020, and they have been on a tour (typically closing with the tune) that touches down in Ireland and Britain next month.“You don’t imagine a folk lesbian duo to be in this hot-pink Barbie movie,” said Notaro, who has been a fan since seeing the “Closer to Fine” video on MTV’s alternative rock show “120 Minutes.” “Kind of just selfishly and personally, I feel like, ‘Yeah, we were onto something all these years,’ you know? It’s validating. Obviously it’s been a huge hit forever, but this is so next level.”“When I hear a song like that,” she added, “it feels like just my chest bursts open with joy and hope.”The Indigo Girls are also the subject of a documentary, “It’s Only Life After All,” directed by Alexandria Bambach, which premiered at Sundance in January. The film serves as a reminder of how Saliers and Ray, both openly queer and from religious Southern backgrounds, endured scrutiny and prejudice as “Closer to Fine” put them in an early spotlight.“For the longest time I always felt we were the brunt of lesbian jokes in kind of a lowest common denominator,” Saliers says in the documentary. Ray echoed those sentiments in the film, saying, “It seemed like the most derogatory thing you could be is a female gay singer-songwriter.”Critics would refer to them as too earnest or overly pretentious, if they covered them at all. The duo were used to comic effect on “Saturday Night Live” and “South Park”; even Ellen DeGeneres employed them as a punchline after her character came out on national television on her sitcom “Ellen.”“That time period that really was just so critical of women — of queer women, of women that didn’t present the way that a patriarchal system wanted them to,” Bambach said. “I think it’s a really critical time for us to be looking back at, you know, just things that we scoffed or laughed off or said were OK.”Brandi Carlile said after watching the duo take so many shots over the years, the “Barbie” moment is extra sweet. “The real injustice of how the Indigo Girls have been treated throughout these last few decades is that they’ve been used as kind of this dog whistling acceptable way to sort of parody lesbians, and I always felt destabilized by it,” she said. “And so seeing something like this happen for them on this scale and watching them and that iconic kind of life-affirming song make its way to new ears is probably one of the coolest things I’ve seen in years.”The singer-songwriter Katie Pruitt, 29, found the Indigo Girls in high school but further embraced them in college, when she said their music gave her the confidence to write personal and descriptive lyrics from her experiences as a gay woman.“Representation in culture is the biggest, the single most important thing I think for people to fully embrace themselves,” she said. “You need all these different examples of who you’re allowed to be, and the answer is anybody — you’re allowed to be anybody.”Pruitt called “Closer to Fine” the “northern star” of songwriting. “It’s incredible that it’s having a resurgence in 2023” in “a franchise that I grew up associating with extreme heteronormativity,” she said. “I love how now they’re rebranding it as something incredibly inclusive.”Bambach, who discovered the Indigo Girls during singalongs led by counselors at youth summer camp, saw “Barbie” on opening weekend in Atlanta and said there were screams of joy and recognition when “Closer to Fine” played onscreen.“It’s very gratifying to think that there’s something that this very fine director saw in the song that had cultural relevance in this day and time,” Saliers said. But above all, she appreciates that time has allowed listeners to step back and appreciate the band’s music as simply music.“We’re finally allowed to just be us,” Saliers said. “I guess we’ve stuck around long enough and it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s just Amy and Emily.’ We no longer are the brunt of a joke and we’re flourishing in certain ways in terms of this relevancy, which is gratifying. It’s strange, you know, to watch culture change and move — and it really has changed for us.” More